The ranch is currently unencumbered and has no conservation easements.
The owner has also been able to produce income from water leasing, gravel sales, and special events on the ranch. The most revenue was in 2019 from water and gravel sales, resulting in $445,000 in water and $45,000 in gravel revenue. The mineral lessee also pays $50,000 a year in lease payments for their production facility. In addition, significant income is produced annually from hay sales.
The heart of The Grizzly Ranch is at the Grizzly headquarters, where there is an impressive array of improvements for the cattle operation. These are for the most part. relatively newer, state-of-the-art facilities for the breeding, care, feeding, and sale of the ranch’s livestock. The buildings were constructed by Morton and are thoughtfully designed to facilitate efficient and injury-free handling of cattle or horses.
The 19,000 square foot sale barn/event center is a showcase for the ranch operation. It features a very nice reception area, offices, commercial kitchen, sale arena, outside pens, staging, and working areas. The sale barn has a set of pens made up of gates allowing for configuration of the working area to suit operations. It has electrical outlets throughout the facility and from the ceiling giving one unlimited access to electricity for any purpose.
The working area also contains a chute and lead-up to work cattle prior to going thru the sale ring. The staging area for the sale arena has a herringbone system that allows up to six cattle in the alley, separated and ready to enter the sale ring, facilitating quick and efficient cattle sales without injury or hold-ups. Shipping pens behind the sale barn are set up in a two pensalley-two configuration for ease of handling large numbers of cattle in and out of the sale barn. These pens are connected to a set of alleys designed for pick-up with trailer load-out pens so four trailers can be loaded out at the same time for immediate shipping.
The 12,500 square foot calving barn has 48 individual stalls made of portable panels for easy assembly and breakdown. Additionally, the barn can be used as an indoor arena during the winter months. The calving barn also has a one-bedroom apartment and two separate vet rooms with stainless steel counters and cabinets. Both vet rooms have refrigerators and sinks as well as one dishwasher for cleaning calving and embryo equipment.
There are 13 large pens, 32 smaller pens, and 33 Morton cattle sheds designed to handle 1,000± cattle with feed and working alleys. Each pen has good gates at all four corners. The 10,000 square foot shop has a 2,400 square foot heated working area with a small office and upstairs breakroom for employees. The 2,400 square foot working facility is heated and has adjustable chute sides throughout the alleys and a hydraulic chute with scales. The system was designed with the help of Mark J. Deesing, who works with Temple Grandin, Ph.D., a renowned designer of livestock-handling facilities. Outside the working facility are six pens and two alleys, making it extremely easy to work a large number of cattle.
There are four 6,000-gallon cisterns for a total of 24,000 gallons of dedicated water storage for the pens and facilities. The cisterns are fed from an artesian well pumping system with a pump down the casing. The system is housed in a heated pump house, and all of the cattle pens have heated water tanks throughout the facility. There is an additional location with modest improvements, including several homes, garages, barns, shops, pens, and corrals. Several of the homes on the ranch could be utilized as an owner’s home or could be used for temporary housing while a new owner’s home was constructed.
To complement its vast live water resources, the ranch benefits from an incredible amount of irrigation water. The ranch maintains a total of 231.88± cfs of water rights from a variety of sources. These rights include several very senior priority rights from the Grizzly Creeks and the North Platte River, including the number one right on Little Grizzly Creek and the number two right on Grizzly Creek. According to the State of Colorado Division of Water Resources, the land irrigated by the ranch-owned water rights totals 4,700± acres.